THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 12 & 19, 2013
37
testing, so it would be foolish to use any
bats that weren't, in other leagues, illegal.
Welcome to National Pro Fastpitch.
The team was named for the Kenosha
Comets, one of the four original
franchises in the All-American Girls
Softball League, which later became the
All-American Girls Professional Base-
ball League, the subject of the movie "A
League of Their Own." On a couple of
occasions this summer, I heard members
of the Comets---our Comets---exclaim,
"There's no crying in baseball!," quoting
Tom Hanks's line as the disgruntled
manager of a women's team during the
Second World War.
"We grew up watching that," Bianca
Mejia, the Comets' shortstop, told me.
"All the time."
"I would like to think I was Ma-
donna," Brittany McKinney, the starting
catcher, said.
"I would like to think I was Rosie
O'Donnell," Mejia said.
National Pro Fastpitch has existed in
one fashion or another, and under varying
names, since 1997, without gaining much
mainstream traction. Its Web site features
a prominent link that encourages visitors
to "own a team," the sort of ambition that's
ordinarily beyond the reach of sports fans
trolling for schedules and game stats. Mi-
chael Neuwirth, the Comets' founding
owner and general manager, is a forty-six-
year-old insurance-company vice-presi-
dent from New Jersey, who lucked out
when the Carolina Diamonds folded after
last season, leaving N.P.F. with just three
teams and a schedule in need of balancing.
(The others are the Akron Racers, the
Chicago Bandits, and the U.S.S.S.A.
Pride, a team owned and operated by the
United States Specialty Sports Associa-
tion, in Kissimmee, Florida.) Neuwirth
has two daughters, ages thirteen and ten,
who both play softball. "There's certainly
nothing wrong with having Derek Jeter as
a role model," he told me. "But it's so im-
portant to have female role models." His
wife, Jeanne, a social worker, told me that
she'd finally found a use for her English
degree, now that she was helping with
press releases and providing content for
the team's Facebook page.
I first met Neuwirth at the second of
two open tryouts that he held before the
start of the season, to raise awareness of
the Comets and, ideally, to help fill out his
roster. He had inherited the contracts of
eight veterans from the Diamonds, and
signed four of his five draft picks from the
N.C.A.A.'s 2013 graduating class. He
had also coaxed out of retirement the
pitcher Taryne Mowatt, who, in 2007,
had won an ESPY for Best Female Ath-
lete, edging out the basketball stars Lisa
Leslie and Candace Parker. At the first
tryout, Neuwirth told me, a woman
named Dorian Shaw hit the ball so far
that "it still hasn't landed yet." She made
the squad---as did Brittney Lindley, a for-
mer Rutgers standout, who graduated last
December and spent several months ap-
plying for environmental-engineering
jobs, only to discover belatedly that she'd
mistyped her phone number on her ré-
sumé. With no job leads, she felt free to
indulge her softball nostalgia. "So I guess
it worked out for the best," she said.
Neuwirth was dressed in shorts and an
untucked polo shirt, and was carrying a
clipboard, which attracted the attention
of a man who was there with his young
daughter. The man approached him, en-
vious. "That's the dream, isn't it, to own
your own franchise?" he said. "This was
going to be my plan if I'd won the Pow-
erball last week."
"Let me tell you, it's a full-time job,"
Neuwirth said, adding that he hadn't
slept in thirty-six hours. The N.P.F. sea-
son is compressed, running from June
through August, because many of the
players work during the academic year as
college coaches. Most of them earn two
to three thousand dollars a month while
playing, and the teams cover their living
expenses. Neuwirth had spent the past
couple of days getting keys and Internet
connections for the players, as well as
confirming airline reservations for the
team's opening road trip, to Florida, to
play the Pride---a formidable team.
"They're like the Yankees," he said. "They
have all the Olympians."
"Hey, now, Goo-yob on three. One,
two, three: Goo-yob!" (As in
"Good job.") One of the pleasures of
watching pro fast-pitch is that you can
sit close enough to hear the dugout chat-
ter, which is remarkably---sometimes
defiantly---upbeat, and to discern the
players' nicknames for one another, which
aren't always as predictable as men's
(Gelato for Galati, for example). Only to-
ward the end of a 17--0 thumping, in which
october 4s5s6
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